Featured Articles on National Parks Traveler

Great Smoky Mountains National Park is one of the most biologically diverse areas in the world. The display of wildflowers is amazing from early March to late November. Here's where to find the best flower trails for Spring.

We love our national parks. We love the wildlife they hold, the seashores with their sparkling sands, the forests with their wildlife and hiking trails, the soaring red-rock cliffs and plunging canyons. But please, don't ask us to abide by their regulations.

Bad weather, lack of a presidential inauguration, and safety concerns along the Southwestern border with Mexico apparently were the major drivers behind a slight dip in 2010 visitation to the National Park System from 2009 levels.

If a professional bike race charging through Colorado National Monument is the key to the rugged red-rock landscape and its treasures in western Colorado being redesignated as a "national park," then it's time to end the discussion over a name change.

Months in development, the America's Great Outdoors initiative is a broad road map drawn by the Obama administration to both reconnect Americans with the outdoors and outline how the country can preserve much of its natural landscape. But how timely, in light of current fiscal and political winds, is it?

There is was, a bit over halfway through the 110-page America's Great Outdoors report: how President Barack Obama could use the 1906 Antiquities Act to designate national monuments through presidential proclamation.

Though bold and lofty in its vision, with chapters devoted to youth, communities, both public and private lands, and heritage, the Obama administration's detailed report on how to reconnect the country to its outdoors landscape is threatened to be undercut by today's fiscal and political realities.

The only NPS area in the country that currently allows off-leash dog walking has found that efforts to impose new limits on canines is a lot harder than one might expect. After years of litigation and meetings, the park has released a draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS) for a dog management plan for public comments, and it's sparked plenty of additional debate.

The more than 200 national parks established to preserve nationally significant cultural-historical resources "tell America's story" by interpreting about ten broad themes that increase our awareness and understanding of what American culture is and how it got that way.

Faced with a wondrous opportunity to truly preserve a large swath of Florida still bearing wilderness characteristics, one that can play a critical role in the recovery of North America's most endangered mammal, the National Park Service instead looked the other way.

Two bills introduced this month by Senator Mark Udall (D-Colorado) illustrate major challenges that lie ahead for parks and for the nation's economy. Are proposals for possible new additions to the National Park System compatible with calls for a balanced federal budget?

With the Civil War 150th anniversary commemoration gathering steam, this is a good time to reach into the Traveler archives for one of our all-time popular posts: links to videos showing movies of Civil War veterans at the Gettysburg 75th anniversary reunion in 1938. Get ready for goosebumps.

Despite its deep, shimmering namesake lake, Crater Lake National Park is one of the lesser visited of the great national parks. For those who make the journey, that's a great reward. For those who don't, well, they're missing something special.

Years of modeling, planning, and talks, interrupted by lawsuits and inter-agency differences, have produced a proposed air-tour management plan for Grand Canyon National Park that officials believe will restore natural quiet over much of the iconic canyon.

If you've always dreamed of visiting a national park, and wanted to take your family along, here's your opportunity. Three grand-prize winners of the Traveler's first Take Your Family to the National Parks essay contest will win lodging for four members of their family in one of the country's national parks, and some gear to help to help them enjoy the trip.

The list is long, more than 200 names stretching over a century and then some. It's a somber one, as well, tracking the deaths of National Park Service employees from a wide range of fates, from heart attacks to rockfalls to cold-blooded murder.

The recent debate over mule rides in Grand Canyon National Park has left park officials, who say they have to live within their budgets and the public's desires, strongly criticized by mule backers, who say trail impacts might be less of an issue if park managers were smarter with how they spend their money.

Capitol Reef National Park is far enough off most people's radar that they miss out on this red-rock paradise when visiting Utah's other, more famous, parks. In the wintertime? Capitol Reef becomes a virtually private playground.

While many fire lookouts across the National Park System are no longer actively staffed, thanks to higher tech options for monitoring lighting strikes, many of these lookouts remain, aging sentinels that recall an earlier day of fire prevention in the national forests and parks. Here's a look at some of the lookouts to be found within Mount Rainier National Park.

Across the National Park System many changes are expected from climate change, from more wildfires and vanishing glaciers to invasions of non-native species and flight of long-term residents. Writer/photographer Michael Lanza, concerned that today's park landscapes will change significantly by the time his young kids are his age, has been touring the park system with his family to show his children what they might miss later in life.